Who’s Rocking the Cradle? Women Pioneers of Oklahoma Politics from Socialism to the KKK, 1900-1930, uncovers the roots of Oklahoma women's political culture.  Who’s Rocking the Cradle? begins on the left with the activities of Oklahoma women, who organized and promoted the Socialist party to Oklahoma farmers during the economic uncertainty of frontier settlement. But, after the Oklahoma Socialist party started to wane in 1916, and after passage of women's suffrage in state in 1918, Oklahoma women, more ideologically centered, became involved in politics to educate Oklahomans, especially women, to the responsibilities of citizenship and the meaning of good government.

As the country turned more to the right after the First World War, so too women's political culture. By the mid-1920s, many Oklahoma women joined such ultra conservative organizations as the Ku Klux Klan to fight against what they perceived as erosion in values of traditional America. The book also highlights Oklahoma women, who ran and were elected to political office. From Democrat Mrs. Lamar Looney from Hollis, who was elected to the Oklahoma state house, to Republican Alice Robertson from Muskogee, who was elected to the United State's house of representative in 1920, Schrems traces Oklahoma women's political activities and contributions to state politics.

Mesa Verde Cliff Dwellings in Southwestern Colorado

On a cold wintry December day in 1888, Richard Wetherill and his brother-in-law, Charlie Mason, cowboys from the Alamo ranch in Southwestern Colorado, spent most of their afternoon rounding up strays on the high mesas and steep canyons above their winter camp on the Mancos River. The going was tough and blowing snow made hard work of finding their cattle. As they rested their horses on the edge of a mesa, they saw at the far side of the canyon a complex of stone buildings built under a large outcropping of rock. Under this protective rock overhang was a village of houses, towers, and kivas, all strung together like a huge apartment complex. The cowboys named the location Cliff Palace. (Below)

No one knows for sure who constructed, with such skill, a community of buildings high up on the side of a canyon wall; buildings that have survived the harsh elements of the mesa country for over a 1000 years. Anthropologists and historians refer to the people as hunter gathers, basket makers, cliff dwellers, Anasazi, (Navajo for “ancient ones) or more formally, or Ancestral Puebloan People. All that is known about them is found in the ruins of their cliff dwellings. (The Anasazi occupied a large area of mesa and canyon lands known today as the four corners, where Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico meet.)